Hi. Gail here. I just asked helpfulsnowman, our Community Director, if LitReactor can accommodate critique groups/special interest groups, that want to bond around a particular aspect of the craft and more aggressively support @ other's posting in the Writer's Workshop, and thereby form some attachments and avenues of discourse that might enliven the existing format and soup up speed in the already existing Writer's Workshop.
Example: I am forming a group called Writers who like Campbells Tomatoe Soup with Cream. We bond over our common love for canned soup and support @ other rigorously when one of us makes a post to the workshop.
Question, for all ye old time Lits. Does this site have a way to accommodate bonding other than trying to follow a particular thread that attracts like minded scribers who want to eat soup together and talk about writing? ...Get it? If not, then articulate it again for the benefit of others, and tell me if we can do it in the existing tech reality. okay thanks. gsr
I don't know of anything like that, but it would be really cool if there were such a thing. If we could make little groups and such. I feel like even just being able to use more than one genre category/tag (and having a wider selection of those to choose from) to describe your work on the workshop would help.
Maybe one option could be starting one thread where people post/discuss around that particular common interest, post when they have something new in the workshop pertaining to it, and that could sort of be the group?
You should do it! :)
I definitely like the idea of groups. Small groups could help us set realistic goals and push each other to be better writers. It would also allow us to bounce ideas off of each other while we are in the middle of the writing process.
I agree, good idea.
I'm not actually sure if this is possible or not. But I'll find out.
Just to make sure I've got the right thing in mind, what we're talking about is a group page of sorts, under which multiple threads could exist, and that group page is dedicated to and run by a specific subset of forum users?
Okay, here's what I learned:
This was discussed at some point, but the idea never made it through. The reason being, there was concern that it would cause the formation of highly clique-ish groups run by evil overlords ("evil overlords" weren't the exact words used, but you get the gist), and regulating these types of groups would be really difficult if and when things went south.
That said, the higher-ups aren't totally against the idea either.
So, if you all had some suggestions that address those issues, I'm happy to bring it back to the folks in charge. I'd say the main issues at play are:
1. Exclusivity/cliqueishness. I think the root problem to be addressed with this is that it's hard to grow the community if the work and crituques of members are appearing in small groups as opposed to larger groups. Nobody new who joins gets to see the thoughtful critiques and work of other members.
2. How are the groups structured so no one gets a big head or rules with an iron fist?
3. How do we create something that fulfills your goals but also works for the larger, broader internet? I know none of you would take over a group and be a jerk bully, for example, but how do we create a group structure that works for everyone?
I do think there are solutions, however. For example, if it were me, I might suggest that groups can be created, but they only last for a limited time. So if I make, I don't know, the Battered Bastards of Bukowski Group, we go for a few weeks, and then we're disbanded. Sort of like the way the classes work. Maybe in that framework, we limit the group creator's powers and they are not allowed to post their stuff during the period in which they lead a group. That way, the group head can't bully people into anything, and there's good incentive to pass leadership around a little bit.
But I'm really interested in hearing solutions you all have. If this is something you want, then let's come up with some ideas and see if we can't make it happen!
How, if at all, would this differ from writing groups that spring up all the time?
I bet there are members of this site that formed their own writing groups outside the forum though.
I don't think the group element would turn into a negative or hostile thing, just based on what I've seen on other forums. On less sophisticated sites, the groups exist on a particular thread and have regulars that post there. On more sophisticated sites, they have guild/group pages where they can make a group description, have some members in charge of updating information and whatnot, and they have their own mini-message board/forum type place. (The clique-ishness and exclusivity are problems more for places that have a lot of younger users, I think.)
1. If I'm understanding the idea correctly, I don't think we'd want mini-workshops at all. We'd still all be posting to the regular workshop. I think the idea is just a congregation place where we can also mention there to that group, hey, I've got a thing in the workshop. And you would have regular people there who would be responsive and interested in keeping the mutual exchange of feedback going, so they'd pop over to the workshop (the same one we all use).
2. I'm not sure why this would be a problem. Again, just based on what I've seen on other forums. Usually, the people who make groups are doing it for sociable reasons, for the group of people they want to virtually congregate with. If they rule with an iron fist and are unlikable, people don't want to participate in the group, and it dies. If you are very concerned about it, you could make co-ownership mandatory I suppose? But that does seem a bit over-cautious. I would just say, this is a website full of writers. It is chock full of ego. We're going to get people with big egos clashing with other egos, whether there are groups or not. Period. That's just a fact. Look at me! Or any of us really. Tempers flare in the moment and disagreements are heated, but we seem to get over them well enough.
3. I'm not sure that I understand what you're envisioning for the groups, so I'm not sure how to answer this question. The idea would be that users could create groups, so there would be multiple groups, rather than just an exclusive few. There could even conceivably be a group for newbies.
You could certainly always just try it out and then delete the feature if it somehow became a dystopian disaster of nightmarish, egomaniacal virtual dictatorship.
@smithreynolds, I'd certainly be in a writing group with you! My friend Morgan (she doesn't use this site) and I sort of have a 2 person group but the only thing is we both sometimes tend to work at a turtle's pace.
No, no. It's okay. Nobody likes feeling like they're being treated like a kid. I get that.
For the sake of brevity, I may have misrepresented the answer. Kirk let me know they never managed to figure it out, but no one's opposed to the idea, in general. His take was that they talked about it, didn't come up with a workable way to go about it, and it was tabled. But, he's interested in hearing ideas about how it might look. It's a good thing to talk about things after time has gone by, and if something comes up multiple times, that's always a positive sign that it warrants further looking into.
To answer the question, whether it's technologically possible: the answer is probably(?) Question mark included. It's probably possible, but it's definitely more involved than a button-click or two. It's not something that's available now and just being kept in the shadows.
I really meant what I said, I don't think the problem is anyone talking on this thread right now. There's no part of me that thinks any of you are incapable of handling what goes on in a group.
I can't completely speak to the issues, but I can speak to the issue I see as community manager. The problem I see is that of silo-ing a chunk of the best stuff in the community. If the heated discussions, great feedback, and good relationships between members are behind closed doors, how will new people discover whether the site is right for them and see that there's so much good going on? That's not to say these are insurmountable by any means, but that would be the primary issue I see.
But maybe that's not what you were looking for in the first place(?) Maybe that's me interpreting incorrectly, and if so, I apologize.
So, I think that what I'm getting at is, maybe it would be helpful to hear what a pie-in-the-sky version of this looks like to each of you. Take me through it as process, you log in, then what happens?
@smithreynolds Did you ever get to attend Tom's workshop? I was able to attend a 3-day workshop and then met with him over Skype for some time. The workshop there really is incredible. He's such a welcoming, kind person, and if I'm reading you right, maybe what you're looking for is some of the mutual intimacy that happens in a situation like that? People seem free to share very personal stuff there, and there's a mutuality to the sharing. Also, I know that there tends to be somewhat of an unspoken, stylistic commonality among the members, and they develop their own shorthand for things. I feel very, very lucky to have experienced this first hand, and there is definitely a magic there that's worth trying to replicate. I think it's an extremely noble and good goal, and I'd love to help you make that a reality.
What I imagined when the topic was brought up is more or less what other forums call "guilds". I've not been on the site in years, but the one popular example I can think of would probably be the way Gaia does it: http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/
They get a main "about" page and their own mini forum. I found a couple while browsing just now: http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds-home/character-abusers-anonymous/g.1935/ Some of them have restricted membership and others are public. Here's another one: http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds-home/the-history-guild-literature-fashi... (I'm not sure if these links work if you aren't signed in with an account? I can take screenshots if they don't.)
I imagine this could mesh well with the workshop idea if there were a tab on the guild page that had a listing of the guild members' most recent workshop submissions. The same principle as how when you go to LitReactor's front page, there's a list of the most recent workshop submissions that have no reviews yet, except this would be filtered just to show submissions by the guild members rather than submissions with few/no reviews. I can't imagine this would stop people from looking at submissions from everyone. If you only stuck to reviewing submissions by people in your guild, the number of works to choose from would be too few, the list would update much slower, and it would take forever waiting on the people in your guild to make new posts for you to get enough workshop points to post your own work. You'd probably just prioritize the ones from the guild you're in, and then when you have none left to review but still need more points to post, you'd go over to the regular listings in the workshop. The main thing is, you'd get to know a group of people and become familiar with their work, which would hopefully increase the feedback you received, it would make the feedback more specific and tailored to you and to the common interest between you and the guild members, and it'd make you more eager to return the favor of giving feedback to your fellow guild members. You'd also have that forum to discuss particular things of interest to your guild.
The concern for the main forums dying and the groups thriving is an understandable one, but I've just not seen that happen on other sites that have this feature.
I don't think the pages load without being logged in so here's a screencap. Although it will probably be easier to see what I'm talking about if you make an account quick and log in to browse their guild section.
I personally would love to see some sort of writing group develop. I am not super tech-savy so I won't be much help on that front. Basically I am even looking for a way to set something up where a group meets once a week to discuss what they are currently working on at a specific designated time. As far as deciding how to set up the group, I think it is a numbers thing. Each group should be capped at like 8ish people or so. Too large of a group and I think you would lose intimacy. Having the small group would allow you to receive immediate feedback. Then when you have a piece ready, you can post it to the writers workshop. Most of us are terribly impatient and get frustrated when we post pieces of work to receive feedback and then see nothing. This would almost guarantee feedback. I have personally been looking for writing groups but it is difficult to find groups that are willing to push boundaries. I have found groups in my area but I feel like I would need to edit my writing before I would ever show up with something in that setting. And ofcourse editing/sensoring writing is just taking a step in the wrong direction.
Maybe just set up designated times throughout the week for people to join in. 2 hours of "work shopping". Then just make it a cap so that you sign in or log in to the group and when there are a certain number you say it is full but list another time. Leave it open to everyone. I think a good mix of experienced and nonexperienced writers is great. This would also allow us to ask questions about publishing that maybe were already discussed and we missed it. It would also encourage people to keep writing. Help set up deadlines. Each person gets a chance to share a piece and everyone provides feedback. You could even set something up ahead of time that allows each writer to post what they want to discuss at that "work shop" and that way each person has time to read it ahead of time (this allows the 2 designated hours to be the most productive). Or you can leave it as an open discussion. Some ideas to consider.
Ah, I see. That visualization of the guilds thing helps quite a bit.
I'll make another run at it, see what the response is like. I'll just throw in a reality check, there are good ideas that don't make it through for one reason or another. If this doesn't work out, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea or that anyone at LitReactor hates it.
I've found, in my day job, that sometimes the path to getting what you want is about planting the idea, demonstrating its value through making it work within the existing system, and then bringing it up again once the idea is undeniably successful. If the answer is a hard No, then let's work together to find a solution that works within the existing framework for the time being. I'm confident we can.
@smithreynolds
I have good news for you, a new Community Spotlight is slated for this month. As the new community manager, it's one of my duties to get that re-ignited. It's my hope to make it a more regular feature once more, but it's somewhat dependant on people clicking that little orange button. Please, when you see someone mention a success, encourage them to click that button.
I think there are a few issues.
In the old days, there were lots of people who arrived at this site from The Cult. They were Palahniuk fans, or at least that had similar tastes. There was a big group of writers trying to get short stories published in the same publications. Check out the whoring thread from the beginning, or look at the interrogation threads from a couple of years ago https://litreactor.com/discuss/monthly-integration-thread-june-2014
We didn't need sub-groups, because the whole site was a sub-group. And there were so many people active in the workshop and telling everyone about publications, that people interested in each other's work would naturally find each other.
Now LR is a rag tag bunch of individuals, writing in all kinds of genres and there seem to be far fewer active members. I actually think the genre thing is ok - literary writers can learn from genre writers and vice versa. But I don't think, right now, that the site has the critical mass of members to support sub-groups. A few weeks ago it seemed like only Jose and Thuggish existed on here... Of course it's a chicken and egg situation: do we wait for the members to come, or do we go ahead and build something that might attract them?
Just for what it's worth...
Have you ever met those people who, upon hearing you're a writer, ask you to write their great idea up? It's a bit of a cliche, but we've all been there. And the reason we find it hilarious is that we know how much more work creating a story is than simply having a great idea. It's not always intuitive to those who don't have experience writing, because a great idea seems like a short skip to a great story. But with experience, you realize that simply isn't true. I've never been able to blame those without experience for underestimating that gap, because they simply didn't know.
One of the things that I learned as the predecessor to our current Community Director is that great ideas are bountiful, especially from a community as inherently creative as ours. But implementing those ideas tends to be a huge amount more work than I realized when I signed on.
For instance, one of the things I really wish I could have gotten off the ground was the Featured Workshop Story. It's a great, great idea, and one that I literally worked on during my entire tenure as community manager. I was never able to get it off the ground. It wasn't due to a lack of support or technical capabilities; it was the little things. For instance, LitReactor has some serious pull with some serious people, but goodwill isn't unlimited, and burning too much credit on one project can leave us lacking in others, so while having celebrity guest judges would have been cool, it may have left us without as much support for our LitReactor classes or any future contests we might want to run. This wasn't the only reason I floundered on this project, but it's a good example of what I'm talking about.
It was the little, unappreciated facts that can make great ideas really tough to launch. Understandably, with a small base staff and a limited pool of resources, the higher-ups are going to approach any new project with caution to avoid spending too much in a project that hasn't been fully fleshed out, justified, and with a proven degree of enthusiasm backing it.
That's my two cents. Having worked closely enough with the upper staff for a few years, I can tell you definitely that they are fully invested in the community and will generally go to crazy lengths to accomodate anything they can to make the community better. Caution isn't resistance, and sometimes things need to marinate a little, either to show that it's truly an idea that could work, or to show the places where it's a bit too weak to stand on its own.
And, as I've always said, the more work YOU do on your great idea, the more easily LitReactor can typically facilitate said idea (see the Thunderdome). These forums are a great place to flesh things like that out, so if you want this idea to work, this thread would be the best place to make it happen.
To piggyback on @Nathan...
Jim Butcher, before he published, was arguing with someone that ideas were overrated and not as important as the actual skill of writing. Eventually he was challenged with two very bad ideas (Jim said gimme two and I'll combine them into something great, essentially), and they were: pokemon and the lost roman legion. (This was before pokemon go, by the way).
Jim Butcher then wrote Codex Alera, a New York Times best selling series.